Parties Interested in Sign/Billboard Blight

To: Parties Interested in Sign/Billboard Blight

From: Gerald A. Silver, Pres. Homeowners of Encino

Subject: #75 SIGN/BILLBOARD BLIGHT UPDATE

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Los Angeles Daily News - 04/10/2007

Our Opinions

Someone ought to fight back against scofflaw industry

Billboard blight

LOS Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is about as unlikely a candidate for Battler of Billboard Blight as they come.

This is the man, after all, who got elected to his current office in 2001 largely thanks to more than $400,000 worth of donated billboard advertising. Remember when ROCKY was everywhere?

And just in the past year he was criticized for settling a billboard lawsuit rather than fighting it.

Still, if he's got the urge to bite the hand that once fed him - the wealthy billboard industry that he says "ignores our laws" - then more power to him.

No one else in Los Angeles' leadership has had the guts to stand firm against a pushy scofflaw industry that has contributed to the aesthetic discord of many neighborhood thoroughfares in Los Angeles.

That's clear from the city's skyline, which is marred by more than 10,000 billboards hawking items from cars to fast food and everything in between.

Actually, Delgadillo is seeking more of a whack than a bite. He wants a new state law that would give him the "legal hammer" to smack down illegal billboards in the city.

That hammer is to come in the form of Senate Bill 563, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, which Advertisement would allow local governments to order billboards removed after giving the companies time to amortize their costs.

The bill also would fix current law that allows illegal billboards to remain in place if the city takes more than five years to identify and cite them.

The city's elected representatives have for too long let the billboard companies push them around, perhaps because they contribute so handsomely to their campaigns and hire well-connected lobbyists who operate so freely in the back rooms of City Hall.

They passed a law in 1980 to phase out billboards along a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. More than a quarter-decade later, billboards still line the street. And billboard companies know they can flaunt the laws with impunity, which explains clearly how inappropriate billboards in residential front yards are a not-uncommon sight in Los Angeles.

Copyright 2007 - Los Angeles Daily News
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HOMEOWNERS OF ENCINO
PO BOX 260205
ENCINO, CA 91426

April 17, 2007

Honorable Assembly Member Fiona Ma
California Assembly Fax: (916)319-2112
State Capitol Building, Room 2176
Sacramento, California 95814

Subject: ASSEMBLY BILL No. 830 Opposition

This letter is to indicate our strong opposition to Assembly Bill 830 that would increase the visual pollution of outdoor billboards in California.

We urge you to oppose this Assembly bill. The negative aspects far outweigh any benefits that might arise.

Under existing law, billboards that are static, and non-electrified cannot be converted to moving, electronic advertising displays simply by right.

This bill would authorize the conversion of a permitted advertising display for use as a message center, thus creating a proliferation of brightly lit, flashing, back-lit electronics billboards. This bill would allow tens of thousands of existing billboards to suddenly become traffic hazards.

We disagree with the claims that changing technology in advertising displays require this visually polluting bill. The justification that brightly lit, flashing, back-lit or electronics billboards would enhance the business climate is self-serving, and patently false.

California law need not be changed to allow the conversion of permitted advertising displays to be used as message centers. If any such measure is ever contemplated, it should be preceded by a moratorium on new electronic billboards, followed by extensive, bonafide traffic studies that carefully assess their impact on public safety, drivers performance, accident rates, fatalities, etc.

Other means are presently available to deliver emergency messages and Amber Alerts that are less hazardous to the driving public and certainly less polluting than encouraging enormous, gaudy electrified billboards.

Cordially yours,

Gerald A. Silver
Pres.

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LA City Beat - 04-12-07

Battle of the Billboards

L.A.